Product Description
A Freewheelin’ Time is Suze Rotolo’s firsthand, eyewitness, participant-observer account of the immensely creative and fertile years of the 1960s, just before the circus was in full swing and Bob Dylan became the anointed ringmaster. It chronicles the back-story of Greenwich Village in the early days of the folk music explosion, when Dylan was honing his skills and she was in the ring with him.
A shy girl from Queens, Suze Rotolo was the daughter of Italian working-class Communists. Growing up at the start of the Cold War and during McCarthyism, she inevitably became an outsider in her neighborhood and at school. Her childhood was turbulent, but Suze found solace in poetry, art, and music. In Washington Square Park, in Greenwich Village, she encountered like-minded friends who were also politically active. Then one hot day in July 1961, Suze met Bob Dylan, a rising young musician, at a folk concert at Riverside Church. She was seventeen, he was twenty; they were young, curious, and inseparable. During the years they were together, Dylan was transformed from an obscure folk singer into an uneasy spokesperson for a generation.
Suze Rotolo’s story is rich in character and setting, filled with vivid memories of those tumultuous years of dramatic change and poignantly rising expectations when art, culture, and politics all seemed to be conspiring to bring our country a better, freer, richer, and more equitable life. She writes of her involvement with the civil rights movement and describes the sometimes frustrating experience of being a woman in a male-dominated culture, before women’s liberation changed the rules for the better. And she tells the wonderfully romantic story of her sweet but sometimes wrenching love affair and its eventual collapse under the pressures of growing fame.
A Freewheelin’ Time is a vibrant, moving memoir of a hopeful time and place and of a vital subculture at its most creative. It communicates the excitement of youth, the heartbreak of young love, and the struggles for a brighter future.
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 She's got everything she needs, she's an artist and at last she looks back
When I saw Suze Rotolo in No Direction Home it sent shivers down my back. You may talk of Patty Boyd, Jane Asher, and Anita Pallenberg, but Suze Rotolo inspired Boots of Spanish Leather, One Too Many Mornings, It Ain't Me Babe, Ballad in Plain D, She Belongs to Me, If You See Her Say Hello, and numerous others of Dylan's most passionate, thought provoking and beautiful love songs. In Chronicles, Dylan himself, credits her with introducing him to ideas that would spin his art in it's most fascinating directions. She is the muse of muses and when I saw she'd written a book I couldn't wait to read it. Of course when you feel like that, you're often disappointed. I read this book in one sitting totally emersed in Suze' world, the best era in my lifetime. While one might wish for more candor and more specifics, the portrait Ms. Rotolo paints of her life, her community, and the young Dylan is like no other available. She is honest without being provocative. She admits she has a problem with being the focus of attention and with analyzing her own motives. At the end of her book, She says: "My aim was to capture the emotional truth that defined the experience rather than to present 'just the facts.'" But even as I read it, I thought that 'emotional truth' was the most mercurial aspect of the story. At one point Suze says that Dylan's songs from that period are not in the least mysterious or metaphorical to her. She understands them specifically. Now that's another book, Suze, and if you write it rest assured I'll buy it and read it!
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 Don't Think Twice, It's...well, All Right ( robert10765 )
More precisely, I'd give it 3.5 stars. Dylan fans: Don't be deceived by the book's cover or the title. It is not a book about Bob. The byline is a more accurate description of the content: "A Memoir of Greenwich Village in the Sixties". And of course - it is a book about Suze Rotolo, Dylan's girlfriend during the early stage of his career. Sure, a good deal of it deals with stories of life with Bob Dylan and it offers some insight into how he related to Rotolo, friends, family and colleagues but there are no serious Dylan revelations within these pages. Dylan fades out around three quarters of the book and I expected him to return but he, unceremoniously, never did. Suze Rotolo's writing is choppy and just as she gets going on a story, she drops it and starts on another unrelated subject without really tying things together. She makes a good attempt in the end to summarize the book but there is still that empty spot where Bob Dylan once stood. There's a little bit of ADD here and I often grew tired of a young, 20-year-old woman searching for herself in the Sixties. There are good insights into the gender culture of the times and the early history of Feminism which makes the reader wonder if that's what was behind her breakup with Dylan. Rotolo repeats herself on occasion and I am surprised her editors did not catch it. There are a lot of players to watch out for in the book and they pop up but I was disappointed I didn't get to hear more about them. The book is a good cultural history of Greenwich Village and other areas of New York City that should be appreciated by people who know the area well.
I have to say though - despite any negative comments above - I enjoyed this book and it held my interest. I would recommend it to Dylan fans as a curiosity and to those interested in life in The Village during the Sixties.
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This is my story ( ctodd1000 )
Suze Rotolo has captured the essence of the sixties in The Village with devastating accuracy. She has told my story, with all my own experiences, these many long years later, ; parts of which moved me to tears. Here I thought I was the only one who saw and remembered things this way. Her descriptions were spot on target; it was just like being back there working at the Gaslight and hanging upstairs at The Kettle of Fish.
People were enthralled by the stardom, recording contracts and the money floating around; everyone trying to grasp that "golden ring." Even though we thought we were there for such lofty ideals, it was difficult to be there too much of the time. Excellent writing; she has painted a perfect picture of hopes and dreams, some gone awry. Yet she points out that the gifted, creative force, will always find a way to survive. What happened to all of us, the children of the sixties? Where did we all go? Rotolo has done a great service to us all, reminding us that creativity and the good spirit still exists. I thought it was gone for good. * * * * *
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 Greenwich Village with Dylan ( jeanniebohince )
I liked reading Suze's account of her time with Dylan, the folk scene in Greenwich Village, the affordable housing and easy employment opportunities. Once time moves forward there's no going back to the simplicity of that particular time, the early 60's, so it's enjoyable to read about.
She had an unorthodox background and a lot of independence for someone underage, and she had a lot of adventures. Her descriptions are earnest and vivid. Unlike some other biographies about women behind rock stars, there's no sex. It's an impassioned story of two teenagers growing up and one of them becoming very famous.
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"The Times They Are A-Changin'..." ( kennyg954 )
When you look at the iconic photograph, that graces the cover of the classic '60s record album "The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan" it brings about so much emotion. A young Bobby Dylan, hunched over, hands in the pockets of his jeans, walking down a snowy NYC street. Clutching his arm is a beautiful, young woman with a smile, that looks like it could light up the whole world. The photo to me speaks volumes of both young love and the innocence of a new generation at the begining of a new decade.
We all know Bob Dylan and how he would eventually become a potent voice and icon of the 1960's. But who was this young women in the photo? The simple answer would be Suze Rotolo, Bob Dylan's girlfriend at the time. But that answer is really too pat (and dismissive) and dosn't really tell the whole story.The story is told now in Suze Rotolo's new book, "A Freewheelin' Time". On the book's cover it says "A Memoir of Greenwhich Village in the sixties". And that's what it is. Anybody, who comes to this book expecting 'The Life and Times of Bob Dylan' is going to be sadly dissapointed.
Instead, Ms.Rotolo concentrates on writing about her days as a young woman, living in NYC's bohemian Village of the early 1960's. She talks about growing up in her very non-traditional, politically active, Italian family. She terms herself a "red-diaper baby", because of her family's communist beliefs. By a young age she was on her own, pretty much taking care of herself. And yes, by 1961 she had met and passionately fallen in love with an up and coming folk singer, by the name of Bob Dylan. She talks of living with Dylan and what their life was like in the Village, where there was a very close sense of community made up of musicians, writers, artists and a whole host of interesting characters, who came and went in their lives, some of whom were almost like family.
In the end Suze Rotolo watched as Dylan was starting down his road to fame and fast becoming a musical icon. She didn't want to become part of that and just be 'Bob Dylan's girlfriend' (or as she termed it "another string on his guitar".) Instead this bright, vivacious, artistic person lead her own life and it was a very interesting one to boot. This is a good read, that vividly recalls a certain time and place with a touch of nostalgia. Highly recommended!
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